Spent most of the day on the phone, but got a lot accomplished. All in all it was good.
Talked to my friend Mac at the coffee shop. He was interested in Advogato, but he doesn't know how to use a computer, and we got to thinking: "How does Advogato and it's trust metric system apply to real life situations like peace treaties and such."
So, that got me thinking all the way home. "What if you could rank your neighbors as dimwits everytime their dog did a number to your lawn. " Or "Could I rank them as a Journeyer because they let me use their pool.
It dawns on me that ranking systems propably don't have as much real-life application.
So, now I'm stuck thinking about things like real-time ranking systems, or more correctly real-time evaluations in general. Like the 5-generals algorithm. If I recall correctly, the 5-generals were the 5 right hand men of Alexander the great (or was it Napoleon?) but whenever war-time strategy was being decided, they would all vote at once, then if all five votes didn't agree, they would force an election, to decide if the dissenting vote(s) were cast in sound mind.
The modern 5-generals algorithms are used in things like
space shuttle operations and such. 5 or more computer
systems running in parallel, all receive the same inputs,
and all can issue the same outputs, but whenever one
"decides" differently, ALL 5 vote as to whether the one is
needing to be shut-down, including the one that is being
voted on. I have never actually implemented it, but not
having a complete fear of algorithms, I should go look at it
sometime soon.
But, sometime when I'm not so tired. :)
Ok, off to bed. I'm starting to sound confused.